a 40 year old man is having a conversation with a new friend:.
man---i have been married twice.
both wives died.. friend---oh, i am so sorry to hear that.. man----the first wife died from eating poison mushrooms.. friend---oh no, that is so sad.
A 40 year old man is having a conversation with a new friend:
Man---I have been married twice. Both wives died.
Friend---Oh, I am so sorry to hear that.
Man----The first wife died from eating poison mushrooms.
Friend---Oh no, that is so sad.
Man----The second wife died from a concusion.
Friend---Poor thing. What happened?
Man---She wouldn't eat the mushrooms.
if you have an mp3 player (windows media player should be fine), just click on this link to hear them hash it out!.
http://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme/recordings/2004/2003-0779.mp3.
(if you need to catch up on the history of the berry girls case, this ongoing new hampshire supreme court appeal was discussed in more detail in these recent threads:).
I'd like to know if the case was won in behalf of the Berry girls?
two friends were talking, one was telling the other that his wife was having an affair, and he was afraid to divorce her because she would sue him for half of everything.
so the friend told him that he could get rid of her if he had hard sex with her every night.
do that and she will be dead within a year.
Two friends were talking, one was telling the other that his wife was having an affair, and he was afraid to divorce her because she would sue him for half of everything. So the friend told him that he could get rid of her if he had hard sex with her every night. Do that and she will be dead within a year. A day before the year was up the friend visited him and found him in a wheel chair, all crumbled up and asked him how he was doing. He said, oh fine. Well his friend asked, "and how is your wife"? She is over there. The friend looked up and saw his wife playing volleyball, running and jumping and laughing. The husband pointed his finger at her, hands trembling and shaking, and said, "that?s okay bitch, you can laugh all you want to, you will dead by morning.
here is an edited version of a favorite of mine:.
with apologies to the eagles .
already gone well, i heard some people talkin' just the other day and they said you were gonna put me on a shelf but let me tell you i got some news for you and you'll soon find out it's true and then you'll have to eat your crap all by yourself 'cause i'm already gone and i'm feelin' strong i will sing this vict'ry song, woo, hoo,hoo,woo,hoo,hoo
Still I Rise You may write me down in history
it looks inevitable.
do you think this is more a carry over from president pappy bush's not getting the job done while he was in office?
do you think the usa and it's allies can fight multiple wars??
Hi JH, I have feelings similar to yours. I hope that a peaceful solution can be worked out between Iraq and the USA. Pureheart
well, guys, here it is.
it's going in the mail tomorrow.
it's for me but, dad, it's also for you.
Hello Cruzanheart, so sorry for your pain. It brought tears to my eyes. I personally know of a family that went through a similar situation. Of course everyone involved that could have helped the situation were in denial of their contribution to the depressed state that this poor brother was in. All of us will answer one day for the good or for the bad way that we conduct ourselves. God be with you. Purheart
i have not posted in a while, but have been reading the great posts.
i am happy to be a part of this forum.
took me a while to get use to the new and updated forum.
Hello everyone,
I have not posted in a while, but have been reading the great posts. I am happy to be a part of this forum. Took me a while to get use to the new and updated forum. I like it. I will post a subject that I have been working on later. Hi Redhorsewoman. Email me. Thanks Simon.
Pureheart
excellent program!!!!!!!
the young ladies and bill were great!!!!!!!!!!!!.
peace - ll
Excellent interview by Connie Chung. I knew she would do a good job. Did anyone notice how she appeared choked up at the end of the interview as she was introducing the next segement or was it my imagination.
You Go Bill!!!!!
Pureheart
ousted members contend jehovah's witnesses' abuse policy hides offenses.
by laurie goodstein.
william bowen always considered himself a devout jehovah's witness.
Ousted Members Contend Jehovah's Witnesses' Abuse Policy Hides Offenses
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
William Bowen always considered himself a devout Jehovah's Witness. As a child, he felt it was his duty to go door to door passing out the church's magazine, The Watchtower. Later, as an elder in his Kentucky congregation, he said he saw it as his duty to inform church officials that a fellow elder had abused a child.
But when Mr. Bowen contacted the church's headquarters in Brooklyn, he says, he was rebuffed. Frustrated by the church's inaction and by its confidentiality provisions, which he said prevented him from sharing the information with others, Mr. Bowen resigned as an elder in December 2000. A year later, he started a group to monitor child sexual abuse in the church.
Late last month, Mr. Bowen, 44, was excommunicated from the church. Behind a locked door, with plastic bags taped over the windows to ward off onlookers, he said, three church elders meeting at the church's Kingdom Hall in Draffenville, Ky., found him guilty of "causing divisions."
The punishment was "disfellowshiping" complete shunning.
In the past three months, four other people have been expelled from the Jehovah's Witnesses after accusing it of covering up the sexual abuse of children by its members. For Mr. Bowen and other critics of church policies on sexual abuse, the expulsions are part of a concerted effort to keep such abuses quiet.
Expelled Witnesses say the church's own policies and culture conspire to conceal abuse. A panel of church elders, all men, meets in secret to decide each case, a procedure which critics say prevents members from knowing there is an abuser in their midst. To prove an accusation, a child must have a witness to the incident, a condition that is usually impossible to meet.
"This is evidence for the world to see how the Jehovah's Witnesses treat abuse survivors and those who try to protect them," said Mr. Bowen. "They silence them with the threat of disfellowshiping."
J. R. Brown, director of the public information office at church headquarters, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, in Brooklyn, said the church had exemplary policies for handling sexual abuse, which were based on biblical standards and had been widely published in church magazines.
"We're not trying to say we handled everybody in the right way and our elders are all-knowing, all perfect," said Mr. Brown, who declined as a matter of policy to comment on individual cases, including Mr. Bowen's. "But we say, if you take what our policy is for keeping our organization clean morally, it far outpaces anybody else's."
While the Roman Catholic Church has been engulfed in its own sexual abuse scandal, the same issue is beginning to plague the Jehovah's Witnesses, a denomination that claims one million members in the United States and six million worldwide.
But the shape of the scandal is far different than in the Catholic church, where most of the people accused of abuse are priests and a vast majority of the victims were boys and young men. In the Jehovah's Witnesses, where congregations are often collections of extended families and church elders are chosen from among the laypeople, some of those accused are elders, but most are congregation members. The victims who have stepped forward are mostly girls and young women, and many accusations involve incest.
The scope of abuse in the Jehovah's Witnesses is a matter of considerable debate. The church has recently been sued by eight plaintiffs in four lawsuits alleging abuse, one filed in July in Minnesota. Mr. Bowen says that his victims support group, "silentlambs," has collected reports from more than 5,000 Witnesses contending that the church mishandled child sexual abuse.
The church keeps a database of members and associates who have been accused or found guilty of child abuse. Mr. Bowen said church sources had told him the database contained the names of more than 23,000 people in the United States, Canada and Europe. The church says the number is "considerably lower," but will not say what it is.
The church has a firm framework for handling sexual abuse cases. Members who suspect abuse are advised to go first to the elders, who are considered spiritual and moral leaders to whom the members are to turn with their personal problems. Mr. Brown said that the church's legal department advised elders to follow the law in states that have mandatory reporting laws, and in cases in which children appear to be in danger.
The elders are the ones required to judge whether someone has committed a sin like child abuse. If the abuser confesses and is forgiven, the only notice given to the congregation is an announcement that the person has been disciplined. No reason is announced. However, the elders report the person's name to headquarters, where it goes into the database so that abuser is banned from serving in a position of authority.
"If a person can cry a good tune, there are virtually no repercussions and nobody besides the elders ever knows," said Jean Kraus, who said she went to elders in her Queens congregation years ago accusing her former husband of abusing their daughter. She said that he confessed, was reprimanded and was still an active Witness. "They told me that he wasn't a wicked man, that it was a weakness," she said.
The church spokesman, Mr. Brown, said: "We view such judicial hearings as an extension of our shepherding work as ministers. In other words, we're there to save a person's soul. In these cases we are not going to be vindictive because these are our brothers, and we would hope that they would change."
If the accused denies the allegation, the victim's testimony alone is not sufficient unless there is at least one other witness to the act. The church says its policy is based on a scriptural injunction in Deuteronomy 19:15 that says two or three witnesses are necessary to prove a man has sinned.
Heidi Meyer, a third-generation Jehovah's Witness in Annandale, Minn., said she went to her elders in 1994, when she was 15, to say that from the ages of 10 to 13 she had been repeatedly molested by a fellow Witness eight years her senior, the older brother of a friend. The only eyewitness was her brother, who had once seen the man grab her buttocks as she got out of a car.
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The elders asked explicit questions that made her uncomfortable, she said. According to an internal Witness document "Pay Attention to Yourself and to All the Flock," the elders must determine in which category the accusation fits: if it was "uncleanness," a one-time touching above the waist; "loose conduct," touching below the waist or more than once above; or the most severe, "porneia," direct sexual stimulation or activity resulting in orgasm. Each offense carries different penalties, with the most severe for porneia.
The man she was accusing insisted that Ms. Meyer had misinterpreted what happened. The elders agreed.
"I was expecting spiritual guidance," Ms. Meyer said. "I was expecting them to genuinely, sincerely attempt to find justice and protect the rest of the congregation from this same thing happening. And none of that happened."
She, like several other alleged victims and their relatives, said in interviews that the elders warned her against reporting the abuse or talking about it with other members.
"They told me if I spoke about it with anybody, I needed to be careful because I could face a judicial committee for gossip or slander," she said. "If they felt I had committed that sin, I would be disfellowshiped."
Ms. Meyer says she learned only years later that Amber Long, another young woman in the congregation, had at age 12 gone to the elders with her parents to report that she had been molested by the same man. Ms. Long, who is now 23, said she and her parents received a letter from the Witnesses advising her to "leave it in Jehovah's hands."
"They said we shouldn't hold ill feelings about our brothers," Ms. Long said. "Since there weren't two eyewitnesses, they said there wasn't much they could do."
Neither Ms. Long nor Ms. Meyer is still active in the Jehovah's Witnesses. On July 2, the two women filed suit against the man they accuse of molesting them Derek Lindala, 30, of South Haven, Minn. the local congregation, and Jehovah's Witness headquarters. Mr. Lindala did not respond to a message left at his home seeking comment.
Barbara Anderson, of Tullahoma, Tenn., said that when she and her husband lived and worked at church headquarters in Brooklyn in the 1990's, she was asked to gather information about child abuse in the congregations. She said she handed over to church leaders dozens of letters complaining about how cases were handled. For her it was a revelation.
"Jehovah's Witnesses like to say that we have one of the most crime-free organizations," Mrs. Anderson said. "But all problems are taken to the elders, and the elders keep them quiet." She said that the documents prompted an internal debate among church leaders, and that when there was no action, she left headquarters disheartened in 1993, after 11 years of volunteering.
Carl A. Raschke, a professor of religious studies at the University of Denver who has written about the Jehovah's Witnesses, said the group was no different from many other insular religions that aspire to theological and moral purity.
"Groups that tend to be very tight-knit and in-grown historically have a higher incidence of sexual abuse and incest," Dr. Raschke said. "That's an ethnological fact. When a religion tries to be thoroughly holy or godly, it's not going to acknowledge that people aren't living up to the ideals of the faith."
On July 25, Mrs. Anderson was excommunicated. A week later her husband, Joe, who had earlier resigned as an elder after 42 years, was also expelled.
"It is inconceivable to think elders would investigate an allegation of murder to determine guilt or innocence, so why would we investigate an allegation of child abuse?" Mr. Anderson wrote in his resignation letter. "This is just not our field of expertise. We are ministers of God, not police."
Pureheart
role of bishops is now a focus of grand juries
by sam dillon
rosecutors across the nation have taken investigations of clerical sexual abuse before more than a dozen grand juries in recent weeks, stepping up their inquiries into whether roman catholic bishops endangered children by ignoring the crimes, prosecutors and church officials said.. district attorneys from phoenix to st. louis to long island are using the secret grand juries to obtain subpoenas for personnel records and other records from catholic dioceses and to compel the testimony of bishops and priests.
By SAM DILLON
rosecutors across the nation have taken investigations of clerical sexual abuse before more than a dozen grand juries in recent weeks, stepping up their inquiries into whether Roman Catholic bishops endangered children by ignoring the crimes, prosecutors and church officials said.
District attorneys from Phoenix to St. Louis to Long Island are using the secret grand juries to obtain subpoenas for personnel records and other records from Catholic dioceses and to compel the testimony of bishops and priests.
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The number of dioceses facing grand jury inquiries appears to have doubled since the American bishops met last month in Dallas, where they adopted a policy of zero tolerance against abusive priests but took no steps to punish bishops and cardinals who have transferred sexual predators from parish to parish.
Some Catholic legal scholars say the prosecutors are merely responding to public pressure for action.
The latest escalation came on Monday, when Cincinnati prosecutors convened a special grand jury whose only responsibility will be to search for crimes in the church, with no limit on its tenure, an official familiar with the Ohio inquiry said. The regular grand juries that have heard accusations against priests and issued subpoenas for church records in some other cities have been temporary, less-focused bodies, sitting for only a few weeks and also hearing evidence on many crimes unrelated to the church.
Legal analysts said the judicial system has never before directed such a broad and intensive inquiry against the Catholic Church. "Nothing like this has happened before, nothing close to this," said Patrick J. Schiltz, dean of the law school at St. Thomas University in Minnesota, who has defended the church in sex abuse cases in the past. He said some prosecutors were using the grand juries to grandstand.
"That tells what a hot political issue this is right now," he said.
But Jennifer Joyce, the St. Louis circuit attorney, said the grand jury there was an overdue effort to penetrate the secrecy with which the church has shrouded its abusive priests. Ms. Joyce said the panel was investigating many accusations that church officials never reported to the authorities and that came to her attention only when she publicly asked for victims to come forward.
The St. Louis grand jury recently indicted a former priest on felony abuse charges. But Ms. Joyce called it "frustrating that statutes of limitations have expired and some of these men are out of my grasp."
Frank Keating, the Oklahoma governor whom the bishops named to oversee a national church-sponsored inquiry into the crisis, applauded prosecutors for using the grand juries to investigate those who have besmirched the church's name. In a recent interview, he said that grand juries should share information with church investigators and vice versa.
Some prominent Catholics and some legal scholars, though, say that prosecutors are fishing for votes. Several recent surveys have shown that Americans are fed up with clerical abuse and are eager to see bishops held accountable.
"I think we're getting into a trend where we're investigating an entire faith," said Patrick Scully of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the nation's largest Catholic anti-defamation group.
A. W. Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk who has written books about priests and sexuality, said Philadelphia prosecutors phoned him last week to invite him to offer expert testimony before the grand jury there. He said that in April the Massachusetts attorney general's office interviewed him before convening a special statewide grand jury to investigate the Boston Archdiocese.
"This is very positive for America and for the church itself," Mr. Sipe said of the grand juries.
In addition to Phoenix; St. Louis; Suffolk County, N.Y.; Cincinnati; Philadelphia; and Boston, grand juries in Los Angeles; Dayton, Ohio; Louisville, Ky.; Cleveland; suburban Baltimore; and York County, S.C., have also heard evidence and in some cases issued indictments.
In Westchester County, N.Y., a grand jury concluded an inquiry last month by accusing churches of cover-ups and urging state lawmakers to eliminate the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases that the panel said had prevented them from handing up any indictments.
Prosecutors who have convened grand juries to hold bishops accountable for their lenient handling of abusive priests are being forced to explore the law books for applicable statutes. Mr. Keating has said some bishops may be guilty of obstruction of justice. Some prosecutors appear to be seeking to build conspiracy cases. Others said they were exploring charges of endangering the welfare of a child.
In the debate about whether grand juries should be investigating the church, Prof. G. Robert Blakey of Notre Dame Law School, said, "I have one foot in both camps."
"No bishop is above the law, and I'd prosecute him for reckless driving or D.W.I.," he said. But after considerable study, Mr. Blakey said, he had concluded that bishops who have ignored priests' sexual crimes and transferred them from parish to parish acted immorally but broke no laws, and that some prosecutors are playing to public opinion.
"I have three explanations for these grand juries: politics, politics, politics," Mr. Blakey said.
But prosecutors in several cities appear to have convened grand juries to compel the testimony of churchmen. That seems to be the case in Cincinnati, where the prosecutor, Michael Allen, has been investigating the Archdiocese of Cincinnati for three months. Mr. Allen declined to comment yesterday on the new special grand jury there, but in May he expressed irritation with the church's attitude.
"We were promised cooperation from the archdiocese in this investigation and to date we haven't gotten it," Mr. Allen said after the archdiocesan chancellor testified before a grand jury. "What we're getting is an army of lawyers trying to come up with ways not to cooperate."
Dan Andriacco, a spokesman, said that the Archdiocese of Cincinnati had been cooperating "as fully as we believe that we can."
"We don't want to quarrel with the prosecutor's need to do his job," Mr. Andriacco added. "And the grand jury seems to be the tool he thinks is necessary."
